Acknowledgments

This book required the efforts of many friends and peers I wish to celebrate. Eleni Schirmer has coached me during every mile of this several-year marathon with love, patience and precious intellectual insight, making sure that I reached the finish line. Robert Whitney began his advising enterprise over coffee in Montréal many years ago; he initiated me to transnational American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) and has continued to offer guidance, encouragements, and sound feedback ever since. The publication of this book would never have happened without their respective intellectual support and encouragement in the past few years. Thank you both for your outstanding cheering.

Several sources of financial support made the publication of this book possible. I am grateful for the early and generous sponsorship of the Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada (CRSH) during my doctoral studies. I thank the University of Wisconsin – Madison History Department and Graduate School for their support in the form of research and writing fellowships. The Beca Teixidor, from the Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and the Tinker Nave Short-Term Field Research Grant helped fund important preliminary research travels to Mexico and to US archives in 2009. The Vilas and Mellon Foundations also provided crucial financial assistance. More recently, the Programme d’appui aux Nouvelles professeures-chercheures (PANP) de la Faculté des sciences humaines, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) offered critical funding.

Research money would do little, however, without the expertise and assistance of well-trained and devoted archivists and librarians. In France, staff members at the Archives Nationales de Paris, Archives de la Préfecture de Police de Paris, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France all cheerfully assisted their “cousine du Canada.” In Mexico and Peru, I am fortunate to have benefited from the help and guidance of knowledgeable archivists. I especially thank the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Centro de documentación de ciencias sociales (CEDOC) for courteously bringing in collections I needed for review. On the North American side, the staff at the University of Texas Libraries received me with dedication and facilitated my forays into the Benson Latin American Collection beyond expectations. I owe special thanks to the Institute of Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and Julie Hardwick in particular, for helping me gain access to the University of Texas’s extensive resources. William LeFevre, at the Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University, was both patient and kind enough to accommodate my fast-paced research schedule. In Pennsylvania, Wendy E. Chmielewski provided invaluable guidance through the rich material of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Rarely have I seen a curator so knowledgeable about the historical protagonists who live in the archives she supervises. Leah Gass graciously received me at the Presbyterian Historical society in Philadelphia on a last-minute notice. The staff and librarians at Memorial Library in Madison, and especially Paloma Celis Carbajal, have helped my project in more ways than they can imagine.

In the course of two years, I visited over twenty-five archives spread between four countries (Mexico, the United States, France, and Peru) and approximately thirteen cities. My multi-site research agenda was ambitious, and I owe special thanks to certain guardian angels who helped along the way. I would have never emerged alive from these incessant travels without the warm generosity of friends who offered me shelter, emotional comfort, and intellectual camaraderie along the way. Among them are Tony Chapa, Ponciano del Pino, Katherine Eade, Clare and Daniel Friedrich, Kelly Jakes, Jessie Manfrin, Alice McGrath, Molly Noble, Carmen Yasmina López Morales, Christopher Walker, Helen Webb, James Wallace, and every single member of my marvelous Schirmer family in Madison, WI.

Loyal mentors have accompanied this research journey from day one. Cynthia Milton and Catherine LeGrand introduced me to the field of Latin American history in Montréal, Québec. It is under their influence that I first fell in love with history as a discipline of creation. I thank my doctoral advisors at the UW-Madison – Florencia E. Mallon, Steve J. Stern, and Francisco Scarano – for their generous and remarkable advising. These historians set the bar high for themselves and request the same of their students, encouraging us to take intellectual risks and to stand by them. I feel proud to have been influenced by scholars who believed in their students and their craft with passion.

This project began during graduate school in the US. I’m grateful for the intellectual companionship of friends and colleagues in the Ph.D. program in history who have contributed in more ways that I can account for to the ideas and reflections that gave rise to this book. They are: Jake Blanc, Ingrid Johanna Bolívar Ramírez, Charlie Cahill, Marcelo Casals, Adela Cedillo, Ponciano del Pino, Jessica Kirstein, Annie Massa-MacLeod, Andrés Matías-Ortiz, Gladys McCormick, Valeria Navarro-Rosenblatt, Alberto Ortiz, Debbie Sharnak, Dustin Welch, Bridgette Werner, and especially (perhaps because our magic often happened later at night, prompted by that last round of bourbon old-fashioned) Sean Bloch, Chris Dols, Katherine Eade, Tamara Feinstein, Julie Gibbings, Robbie Gross, Simon Fisher, Katie Jarvis, Yeri Lopez, Jessie Manfrin, Elena McGrath, Carrie Ryan, Vikram Tamboli, Kate Waterman, and Naomi R Williams.

My research on trans-American solidarity profited from my participation in the Tepoztlán Institute in Morelos, México, in July 2018. It also gained a lot from the expertise of the colleagues and graduate students who attended the solidarity workshops in New York (February 2019) and Toronto (May 2019) hosted by the International Solidarity Action Research Network (ISARN). I’m particularly grateful to Tony Alessandrini, Anna Bernard, and Jessica Stites-Mor for organizing these events. I was also fortunate to give a public lecture at the University of Toronto in March 2018, thanks to the gracious invitation of Luis van Isschot, where I received sound feedback on the book.

Several colleagues have read early versions of this work and contributed to making the book stronger. I thank the anonymous readers chosen by Cambridge University Press for their attentive reading of the manuscript and for offering shrewd comments and recommendations. David Sheinin believed in this book and offered incisive feedback at an early stage. Daniel Ross graciously helped with the Introduction. Robert Whitney attentively read and commented on every single chapter. Eleni Schirmer attentively read and commented on every single word of this book. I also thank Paul Adler, Marie-Christine Dugal, Maurice Demers, Julie Gibbings, Danijel Matijevic, Hannah Oberman-Breindel, Nicolás Rodríguez, Maria del Carmen Suescun Pozas, Vikram Tamboli, Guillaume Tremblay, and Naomi R Williams for providing invaluable comments and advice along the way.

In the Department of history at UQÀM, the best academic home I could hope for, I thank my colleagues Andrew Barros, Magda Fahrni, Martin Petitclerc, and Daniel Ross for providing guidance and support during the publication process. I thank my graduate students for bringing so much meaning and insight to my scholarly work. I’m especially grateful to Louis-Charles Cloutier Blain for his resourceful work as a research assistant, and to Charles Bénard, Dominik Charron, Olivier Dufresne, Marc-Edmond Lamarre, Frédérique Montreuil, and Alexandre Raymond-Desjardins for delighting with me in the pursuit of ideas on the Americas. The Latin Americanists with whom I collaborate in the Réseau d’études latino-américaines à Montréal (RÉLAM) and the Laboratoire interdisciplinaire d’études latino-américaines (LIELA) in Montréal have gifted me with an inter-disciplinary community of peers and friends with whom it’s a pleasure to learn and exchange ideas.

In the research field, I thank many scholars and colleagues who have shared with me their knowledge and enthusiasm as I explored transnational APRA and its Indo-Américan project. From the early stages of the project, Ricardo Melgar Bao provided attentive guidance and assistance every time I needed it. With Martín Bergel, I shared the intellectual excitement of asking new questions to the field. Exchanges that contributed to shaping my thoughts at different stages of this project also include those I had with Iñigo García-Bryce, Fernando Camacho Padilla, Daniel Iglesias, Horacio Crespo, Mina Navarro, Enrique Plasencia, Juan Pablo Scarfi, Livia Schubiger, Leandro Sessa, and Daniela Spenser. In Peru, I thank Javier Barreda Jara, Víctor Caballero, Ponciano del Pino, Stefanie Graeter, Iván Hinojosa, Hugo Vallenas, and Armando Villanueva for sharing with me their love and knowledge of the Peruvian political landscape.

This is for my parents, Louise et Jacques Dorais, and also for Eleni, my compañera.